Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for controlling power consumption of a voltage regulator in a computer system.
Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One result of such powerful computer systems is an increase in power consumption of various components. Power consumption is also a concern due to the prevalence of portable devices that utilize a finite amount of battery power. To that end, it has become important to manage power consumption of various components of computer systems. For example, a small increase in efficiency of a voltage regulator has a large impact on energy savings for the system.